PDF creation tools

J

jdaly

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I was wondering if there was a tool that would allow me to create pdf documents out of pretty much any text document. Ideally the program would be free or low cost. Similar to www.primopdf.com for windows. The files that I need to convert to pdf's are not just standard text files they contain some other formatting images etc so a straight line conversion tool wont work
 
Howabout using Mac OS X's built-in PDF creator? Simply open your document, press "Print" and click "Preview" and then save as PDF (Panther & Tiger only, I believe).
 
You can print to a pdf in os x. Assuming you can bring up a print dialog in whatever application you use to make these documents, you can make it a pdf.
 
Worse comes to worse and you can take a screen shot of what you want to print (command + shift + 3 for full screen, command + shift + 4 to select what you want to capture) and os x creates a pdf image for you.

Or use the Grab program in APPS/UTILITIES to get the screenshots.
 
jdaly said:
Thanks guys any other suggestions keep em coming
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:confused: Other suggestions because those aren't going to work or other suggestions to see what else is out there?

Assuming the second, there is PStill (which is a distiller application) for about $70 and Acrobat (either standard or professional versions).

But unless you have some special needs, the built in PDF system that comes with Mac OS X should cover what you were originally asking for.
 
I'm with Cat on LaTex and Texshop, but I don't think you'll want to use LaTeX unless you don't mind the daunting syntax.
 
Cat said:
"create pdf documents out of pretty much any text document."
Try LaTeX, install via Fink use with TeXShop.
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Maybe I'm missing something... was the question about a word processor type of application or something that would assist in creating PDFs from any application?

LaTeX and TeXShop are nice... but this seems like an odd place to suggest them. :confused:
 
Sorry for the slow reply here is the situation. I am an IT guy for my company which uses mostly pc's. We have one or two people in the office who use macs. Alot of the people in the office here are involved in the creation and distribution of insurance policy riders and other contractual documentation. The problem is that many of the forms they use get seriously distorted when they are saved in a .doc file format and sent to people, the solution for the windows based people was to give them the free primopdf plugin to turn their policy stuff into PDF's with exact formatting. That is what I am looking for for the mac people as well. I was hoping there would be a free printer driver type program we could use for this.
 
well, tell them to simply go to the print menu for example in word, then choose 'save as pdf' instead of print, and they'll be asked to select a destination for the .pdf file they want to save... the solution you need is already integrated in OS X...
 
jdaly said:
I am an IT guy for my company which uses mostly pc's. We have one or two people in the office who use macs...

I was hoping there would be a free printer driver type program we could use for this.
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:rolleyes: Okay, maybe we should have asked earlier... what exactly is the version of the Mac OS installed on these computers?

The fact that your even asking makes me think you aren't talking about systems running Mac OS X... and so far, all our answers have been assuming that you are using Mac OS X (which is based on PDF).

If we are talking about Mac OS 8.x or 9.x, then yeah, you're going to need third party solution for creating PDFs.
 
It had already been suggested that you can print to PDF from any app in OS X, but jdaly said to keem em coming ... so without knowing anything specific, LaTeX seemed like a possible solution. *shrug* I have to convert back and forth all the time, so it's not that odd to me.
 
Cat said:
... LaTeX seemed like a possible solution. *shrug* I have to convert back and forth all the time, so it's not that odd to me.
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You can edit PDFs in LaTeX? How did I miss that feature? :confused: I was under the impression that LaTeX (and all the Mac OS X TeX solutions) could out put to PDF (which any Mac OS X native app can do), but I had no idea that it was like, say, Illustrator or Create and could edit PDFs too.

I didn't point out Illustrator and Create as they are content creation applications and it seemed like this thread is about helper apps for outputting to PDF.

I have LaTeX/TeXShop installed on my system, how do you import PDFs for editing? That is an impressive feature the could sure save a lot of time!
 
You cannot edit pdfs with Latex.

Latex allows you to create nice looking pdfs as it is a typesetting system. But it is for document creation. Definately not editing any kind of document other than a tex one.
 
Nobody, jdaly and me included, ever said something about editing PDF's. Everybody up to now has been talking about creating PDF's from other text documents.

However, LaTeX and TeXShop have some PDF manipulation (but certainly not editing) capabilities. For example cocoabooklet uses LaTeX to rotate and scale PDF's and create booklets from them.

I'm not trying to plug or push LaTeX as panacea here, but with the limited amount of info jdaly gave LaTeX was not a completely whaco suggestion: create PDF from text. That's what LaTeX does.

What I meant with the converting is that I often convert other text documents to LaTeX, with the explicit purpose of getting nicely formatted and typeset PDF files. Since jdaly later gave further, more detailed explanations of what he wanted it is now obvious that TeX is not the way to go in this case.
 
Cat said:
Nobody, jdaly and me included, ever said something about editing PDF's. Everybody up to now has been talking about creating PDF's from other text documents.
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Oh... well you originally said "I have to convert back and forth all the time", and back and forth to me would seem to be editing... as opposed to just generating which would be a forth but not back.

:rolleyes:

Still, it would have been cool! Being a math student, I have to use (and have had to for more than 10 years now) TeX-based solutions, and while TeXShop is great... with that type of feature it would have been incredible! And I haven't been following advances in this area that closely so I thought maybe I had missed something big.

Oh well.
 
Natobasso said:
Worse comes to worse and you can take a screen shot of what you want to print (command + shift + 3 for full screen, command + shift + 4 to select what you want to capture) and os x creates a pdf image for you.

Or use the Grab program in APPS/UTILITIES to get the screenshots.
Click to expand...


hmm...I have Tiger installed and when I do "Command + Shift + 3"...OS X creates a .png file....
 
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